Winterreise

Mundruczó Kornél, the director of the play: "For me Winterreise is the apotheosis of being on the road. Being always on the move. Waiting for one does not know what. Like in Purgatory. For me, the emigrants’ Purgatory is like a refugee camp. Anyone may end up there, but no one knows the principles of judgement.
Schubert’s traumatic motifs provided me with a special opportunity to think about man’s eternal alienness. And to ask the question whether art can provide a refuge when the very fundamentals of our life are questioned?
The video-installation film cells show actual residents in a Hungarian refugee camp. The time spent with them was an inspiring experience, which, with the help of a few telling scenes, confronts the problems of fundamental existence that countless people have. When I drew from the deprivation and hopelessness in this world, I was seized by such deep shock that I can no longer account for it in words, only with music. The refugees’ generally uncertain and structure-less existence places an exclamation point on the nightmare or reality behind the music of involuntarily slipping into a state of vegetation."

"An interpretation which, like Zender himself, reveals what is current and urgent through the music." (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Germany)

"Finally a performance that does not stop at being esthetic. It does something or aims to do something, to shake things up. A performance that is not just a sheer piece of art, but a clear social-political stand point." (pokaa.fr - France)

"In this production, courtesy of Mundruczó and the Proton Theatre, we see images projected on the backstage wall. Thanks to these pictures, the first verses of Winterreise have a much stronger impact. (...) With his sometimes unusually flowing dramaturgy, the director presents the depressing topicality of homelessness and escape. The spectator cannot look aside. Theatre, concert, and video installation – all reach an emotional peak at the same time. (...) The audience was very receptive and awarded this new interpretation of the piece with loud and prolonged applause." (ORF.at - Austria)

"We get to be witnesses to an extraordinary weaving of theatre, film and music. Kornél Mundruczó approaches a considerably burning theme. It is not simple to address in artistic language a question that raises such passion now. Because of its immediacy, he makes a direct statement." (Máté Csabai - revizor.hu)

"There's a stranger standing in our door - János Szemenyei sings, acts, talks, yells -, just like Schubert's wanderer 190 years ago." (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Germany)

"The Hungarian master director Kornél Mundruczó (...) associates Schubert's wanderer with those on the run from war and violence in their homeland, making the arduous journey to Europe. (...) János Szemenyei is one of them: the singer, expressing himself with fantastically calculated pop music emotions, "lives" in a desolate intermediate realm, stuck between the orchestra and a video wall. He intonates Wilhelm Müller's verses with a deliberate Hungarian accent and serious devotion. (...) It was one of the most impressive premieres of this year's Wiener Festwochen, both aesthetically and content-wise." (Tiroler Tageszeitung - Austria)

"The surprise of the performance is the voice. Although the Hungarian actor, János Szemenyei, is not a professional singer, he attentively works his way through the heights and cliffs of a foreign language and foremost through the strange music, which shows an inspiring process of appropriation that succeeds and yet remains recognizable. The narrow path to the reality of Art proceeds through the effort to master the form." (taz.de - Germany)

"The Winterreise of the Budapest Proton Theater was the highlight of this year's Wiener Festwochen." (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Germany)

"Director Kornél Mundruczó has had the brilliant idea of juxtaposing one of the most famous musical works of the Romantic era, Schubert’s story of a lone traveler (1827), whose unrequited love for a young lady sends him wandering through beautiful country scenery with the terrible dilemma of migrants today who find themselves displaced and on the move, far from their loved ones in what is often the squalor of inhospitable cities." (Plays International & Europe - UK)

"In his direction, Kornél Mundruczó offers a topical reading of the left-by-the-roadside motif, the journey one is forced to undertake, dealing with issues of homelessness and refugee life. During the songs, on the projection that fills the background, we see pictures loosely associated with the lyrics, generally depicting the most fundamental activities of human life: resting, eating, hygiene. The director raises the question: What does it mean to be human? What is the minimum requirement for human existence? Is it really enough to ensure the basic needs of life? In the film clips, residents in a refugee camp try to live a complete life with meagre opportunities in the few square meters of living space. Meanwhile, they are constantly confronted with restrictions, the tight borders of their lives." (Kata Kondor - operavilag.net)